VN - Ren'Py - Imperial Chronicles [v0.7] [Lazy Monkey]

Lazy Monkey

Now that's a name I love hearing. I adore this developer. Back when money wasn't tight, I used to even be a patron. Not because I wanted some goodie behind a paywall or to talk to the developer. Not even to vote or see where the game was going (previous game). But rather because this was a developer that simply HAS to continue creating.

I loved everything about their previous game. The characters, the setting, the story, the art (though man should learn how to denoise his renders). It was still rough around the edges. Default store bought hair that literally every demo game has. Character designgs changing as the dev is learning to use the tools. It wasn't pure perfection, but it was absolutely great!

What I think this dev does that many others fail is that he gives actual consideration to the world and characters. They don't exist in a void, but rather have a past, somewhat complex relations and somewhat balanced. But it's also porn. I don't care for flowery language and self important snooty stories. These are porn games. You need to choke your sister after she made fun of you one too many times. But instead of fear or pleading she just cums. Now that's the sort of stories I want to play! But it's not just nukige. It's not just people fucking for the sake of porn. There's a world and characters. But it's not faff either. You see someone hot? They'll be riding your dick soon.

The above might not seem THAT special. But it's also the way it's done. WHich is to say, rather well. High quality. Not cheap, not campy. Not high art either, but solid.

I could go in on why this game is good. But honestly it doesn't matter. The setting is nice. The political intrigue is cute. The relationships are just great. Fantasy is very apealing to many people. The mc is quite nice. Where I'm used to "barely tolerable at best" from most other games. But honestly none of that matters. To me, it's like reading a book from my favorite author. I don't care about the setting or subject. I just like the way that dudes writes.

Overall, the game pleasantly surprised me with its engaging narrative and character development. The story keeps players interested, and the choices the MC makes throughout have meaningful twists and real consequences.

However, there's one part that, in my opinion, could have been better executed:



Despite that, the overall experience of the game was positive and it is definitely worth playing for those who enjoy stories with meaningful choices and an engaging narrative.

Characters are great.

Writing is at times great, at others it needs a bit of proof reading but it's generally very funny and an entertaining plot.

The branching choices would be great, if they were properly executed, like the devs previous game this suffers from gamebreaking bugs where progress halts behind exceptions and routes forced by other routes being bugged.

So all in all a little bit of proof reading and more care with the programming side and this would be a true gem.

Good game
I feel totally free and every discussion make impact
old story but can make it better easy and can open a lot routes in future.
Every thing perfect except The animations more work that's why i give 4 star's

Decent story with some interesting story choices which is always appreciated, though I understand that keeping multiple branches updated and sensible is difficult. Though the choice of perk determines quite a fair number of scene that you do or don't see which can feel a bit meh considering the lack of forewarning.

I'd say that, despite the LIs being attractive and somewhat fleshed out, the dev could probably have done themselves a favour by reducing the quantity. As is, it feels like the story jumps between them and that there's odd and prominent gaps without some LIs present as a result, though there are some paper-thin attempts to handwave why.

Played the game and all three branches as of v0.5, it's really good !

Writing, dialogues, good humor, visuals, animations, variety of LI and scenes.

The only thing to that could be improved would be the audio in my opinion but that's a very minor point.
Oh and also some typos here and there but the dev is not an english native speaker to my knowledge (kinda hard to translate a game when you don't even use the same alphabet I presume).

I recommend !

This is a very well-made game—one of the better ones here. It is well thought out and beautiful. The sexual content is mostly vanilla, with occasional hints of something darker, and, in general, it works. The same goes for the story. It tries to be on the darker side of things, with court intrigues and such, but nothing overly complicated.

I don't think I'll be following the game to the further chapters. Still, I urge you to try it and take a mental note of the developers—they will surely do great with this game and, hopefully, with the ones that follow.

To be honest, it is a shame to give 'Imperial Chronicles' only 3 stars when you compare it to some zero-effort AVNs, but I can't say that it is perfect, so giving it the best rating seems too much, and it is certainly not my cup of tea. So... the best three stars in existence?

Or, and it is also incest-heavy!

Wow, this was a real treat—chaos, intrigue, diverse personalities, great music, and solid visuals. It's a really good attempt at bringing GOT-like politics into an adult visual novel. I love medieval themes, and the story alongside the adult elements totally met my expectations. The LIs are top-notch, no complaints there—honestly, even the side female characters feel "smashable." My one big gripe is with the English, but that’s something that can be easily fixed. Looking forward to playing the next part!

Wow, what an incredible game.. As many of the earlier reviews have mentioned, this game is truly amazing. The variety of choices and paths is impressive, and every character feels unique and fully developed with such attention to detail. I love how each route offers its own distinct flavor and personal touch, making it feel like you're shaping your own destiny. I can't wait to see more from this. Outstanding work to the developer.

This game absolutely deserves a top rating.

The story is one of the most engaging I've experienced. What stands out is how the background you choose at the beginning significantly impacts the course of the narrative.

While sex is present, it's secondary, and I must say the quality of the story more than makes up for it.

The characters are far from one-dimensional. They aren’t just cardboard cutouts whose only purpose is to desire the main character. Instead, they feel like real, complex people, complete with their own thoughts and emotions. The intricate relationships between them, as well as the ones you develop as the player, keep you eagerly anticipating what will happen next.

The only areas for improvement are the occasional awkward phrasing in the English translation and a single line left untranslated from Russian. However, these are very minor issues and don’t detract from the overall experience.

I highly recommend this game to any fan of dark fantasy, courtly intrigue, and complex family dynamics.

This is the only fantasy VN that I've seen that's good.. The thing about putting things in a Fantasy world, is that your average VN writer isn't skilled enough to pull it off. It's too much work creating a believable fantasy world when all people want to see is porn.

This VN has managed to do that. The relationships are incredibly erotic too. It has some gratuitous scenes that you'll forget about; but it also has some scenes that are just beyond the sum of their parts. They story just fits together.

v 0.6

Story 5/5
Writing 4/5
Characters 4/5
Graphics 4/5
Audio 4/5
UI 3/5

Imperial Chronicles is a true choose-your-own-adventure VN with multiple boobs to follow. Naturally all paths lead to doinking and murder.

You start your career as a bored and exiled princeling filled to the brim with hormonal urges, drinking away the days in a backwater burg, neglecting your studies, and trying your damnedest to get some attention from the local wenches. Depending on your chosen background (nerdy bookworm, worst mage in the world, or capable fighter), you may find some success. Eventually this peaceful boredom ends as your steamy hot sister appears in town with word that you are to return to the capital. At this point MC is free to seek the forbidden hanky panky or a cold shower. And so the adventure begins.
An important aspect of this VN is the presence of choice: not just for show, the choices made shape the story and severely impact how the characters react and respond to MC. There are many paths to tread (as of v0.6 I found three different ways to go) with distinctly different outcomes, and distinctly different doinking.

Story 5/5
The story in this VN truly is top tier. As a political plot it hits well, not too abstract or deus ex machina ridiculous, and not so simple as to be obvious - it is similar to the style in Game of Thrones where patterns are not too complicated but the influx of new events keep adding curve balls to the mix. The different backgrounds also provide some differentiation with different sex scenes, interesting comments (mostly from the nerd), and special paths opening up. So far I have also not encountered my pet peeve, the random assassin ninja lazer pew pew girlfriend that never fits into the western medieval setting. The story has good pacing, and there is just enough information available to try and make rational decisions that aren't random (though we all know that in the end the choices are based off who's tiddies you want to gargle the most). Altogether it works really well, and feels neither forced nor meaningless. On a personal note, I never felt that MC was a mongoloid (except when drunk and looking to score) or a meaningless Superman in this VN, which is a breath of fresh ass in my book. The one thing I would like to see one or two examples more of (as of v0.6) would be silly bits (like the drinking with Aker in the prologue or tricking Aurora as a servant). Oh, and all the forbidden hanky panky is optional, so do not worry about your immortal soul.

Writing 4/5
This is a difficult one, the opposite of what I usually describe. The grammar in this VN is straight up bad. There are a lot of typos, a lot of presumably word-check related misclicks, and I even encountered one screen where the text was in mostly Russian. Not great. On the other hand, the writing never gets wooden, there's rarely any blathering exposition, and most of the text has a distinct purpose that works well together with the scenes in a show don't tell configuration. Something that stands out after having read too many VNs created by below 25-somethings is that this dev tries to avoid sounding like a current year teenager, going so far as to not use current vernacular, which greatly improves the immersion. The semantics are solid too, with all the political groups conveying what they want others to hear, and often a few extra lore points available for those that seek them out (remember that you can choose a lot of stuff here). I much prefer poor grammar to poor semantics, as I can easily parse a typo but not so much a plot. If you have trouble with English, this VN may cause you problems, but otherwise I recommend you overlook it for the high quality semantics and respect for the reader this VN offers.

Characters 5/5
The available characters are just the right amount and most are interesting, not to mention inscrutable. Your mommy (also comes with forbidden hanky panky possibilities) is a very inconspicuous lady that will prevaricate when pressed and has secret meetings with shady elves. Your forbidden fruit sisters are either sus AF or innocently helpful (so far), and due to some poor choices while drinking and a lust for vambussy, you are haunted by a granny vampire that wants to bite your dick off.
The characters are different enough to be interesting, sneaky enough that you do not trust their words, and there's enough going on that you can eventually figure out what they're up to. There's also just the right amount of sexy stuff going on for my tastes, organically flowing into the story but not interrupting it.

Graphics 4/5
Graphics are solid, and animations are solid. In a few areas I feel like they have been clipped, going from one main scene point directly to another, where I would much prefer to have a short interlude showing the journey or plan or whatever. It's disorienting to stand in the throne room talking to some tiddies and then it cuts directly to hanging by the belltower alone. Something is needed inbetween such cuts to make them less abrupt and unexpected.

Audio 4/5
Audio is good, choice of music is mostly good.

UI 3/5
The UI is barebones but works. The text font used could be better.

Summary
A highly enjoyable VN with most boxes ticked. Once the text is cleaned up and the bugs are squashed it would not surprise me if this turned out to be one of the highest rated story-first VNs on F95.

This game oscillates wildly between the kind of greasy, half rotted three-day-old garbage you'd find in a fast food dumpster and brutally realistic takes on power and family like a drunken yo-yo. Dostoevsky would be proud. Five-fucking-stars!

That said, the game is .... something else. I think its well written, but it's hard to be sure, because english is clearly not the Dev's native language. The renders are pretty and the animations are sparingly used (that's a plus in my book, but not for everyone). The sex scenes are interesting.

Oscar Wild once said, 'everything in life is about sex, except for sex. Sex is about power.' Good sex scenes often involve a power element, or a state of change or a culmination of a long build up. Bad sex scenes are just the Dev throwing "hot" bodies together and the usual words into a bowl and mixing them up, 'take it' 'slut' 'harder' 'it's my first time' 'i've never seen one that big before'. The point is, the former is far more sexually charged than the latter.

As for the plot, I'm loving the branching narrative and the characters have their own ambitions and depth, which only adds to both the overall narrative and the sexiness of the game. SPOILERS!!!!! Don't read if you're not caught up!!!!

My favorite character is Cass, simply because she is a rarity in LIs. She's diametrically opposed to the protagonist. She has her own views and she doesn't fall into the MCs orbit. In fact, you have to join her to continue the romance right now. I love that. It both deepens her as a character and stays true to the narrative the Dev is building. Frankly, I'll be much happier if she can never be romanced on the other paths, because I'm not sure it would be believable.

Anyway, this game is well worth your support and your clicks. Internet pervs, do your (filthy) thing.

wow i imagine the amond of work to have all this choises , one of the few games where to play all the paths is worth; is like baldurs gate without the combat, the story is better game of thrones inspired than finalfantasy 16

Now this shit is what I'm looking for in this site

Plot : 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Lewd scene ; 5/5
Animation: 4/5
(W)incest: 5/5

This game is definitely one of my fav now, I hope the story will still go far after the coup.

A short review for now:

+ One of the more interesting games on this site, easily.
+ All characters are interesting and have some subtle layers to them. The writing hints that all have their own motivations, despite not all of them having much written about it.
+ Overall look is good. Characters especially, feels unique.
+ The paths are different enough, I understand there is hard limit what is feasible for to do in small games.
To get into details, some paths felt like the conclusion of end of the chapter 6 was a little off compared to the chapter played before it.
+Short development times, but I had a chuckle when I saw other people say it was long. Your mileage may vary.


Nothing overly negative to say about this game.
It has room to grow a bit, a bit more meat on the bones. A good sign really, wanting more of it.
Could be more sexy times, but story wise it makes sense to tease out.

Abso-fucking-lutely insanely good. Beyond anything on this site.

The extremely low standards for porn games means that every other game gets a 5 star review. If stuff on the first page for the site gets 5s, then this game is a 10/5. It is just so much beyond anything else on the site.

See, I play literally every porn game ever on permanent skip because porn developers are terrible fucking writers. This game is one of the very, very few exceptions and by far the best one.

The writing is actually, genuinely, interesting. Characters are great and are more than walking fetish baits, they have different motives and depth, the dialogue and backstory is engaging, even the fucking sex is more than "OH MY GOD I LOVE UR COCK MC OMGG". It's just so good.

And the paths ACTUALLY matter. Whatever you pick, there is a sense of loss because you have to let go of a charismatic, intriguing character to get more out of another one you like a tad more. It's fucking excellent.

And while the renders are grainy, the animations get increasingly better, and are second only to the seven realms in quality by the latest updates.

Play this shit. You will not regret it. If I could give beyond 5 stars I would.

Edit: Been 3 updates since this review so I thought I'd update it. First and foremost while I still do love the writing I forgot to mention in my fanboying that it's very obviously an ESL game. The author is Russian and often writes with minor grammatical mistakes which can be ignored, what can't be ignored are the ESLisms. None of the characters speak naturally as the author seemingly translates the exact dialogue in Russian literally to English, instead of localizing it.

Furthermore, while paths do diverge, they need to come back together otherwise there would be too much work. That reconvergence has recently happened in the game and it kind of sucks. Sometimes, the story takes a hit.

Still a good game.

This is by far my favorite game, the story is very good, I almost never press CTRL, the characters are so pretty and distinct, almost every choice matter and I have 10 different saves. I very much recommend this game and would happily support the dev financially.

This game is underated imo, the renders is nice and beautifully done even tho its a little bit grainy.

The story are decent enough unlike most of the AVN on this platform but the multiplies path kinda ruined my impression as i'm not really a fan of that, and it can be confusing if you're not playing it by using a walkthrough.

Overall its deserved a 5 star as this game obviously getting an improvement from his previous game, i just hope that he toned down the multiplies path since you can missed a content if you're playing a certainn path and made a wrong decision, a single developer shouldnt made this type of game imo unless you had a team like most of the Japanese eroge out there.

A good game i cannot deny ,
but it has some positives & negatives ofcourse :

The Positives :

most of the girls are very sexy ,
my favorites starting with the best to less :
( Arcadia , Priscilla , the Mom , Isis , Tira the dwarf , Sona , Alaina , Ahara , Val , Cassandra , Lia , Elin , Rosa )
I can say ( Girl Spring - Aurora - Patty - the slave girl ) are OK , but not really my type. they are a bit skinny for my taste
the sex scenes are one of the best in all the games i have played , specially the sex sound effects , instead of writing the moans & the boring nonsense " OHH YEA , MMM , YOUR PUSSY ARE GREAT , OHH FUCK ME BABY " hearing the moaning & cum sound effects instead , will do the job perfectly & way better than using unfeeling texts , & you gonna actually read an interesting conversation during sex , its very unique , and adds more feeling to it , even the animation movement are great & not robotic like the other games , to bad its very short scenes
the story is not bad though , he made it serious some times & humorous at other times .
im also so glad there is no narrator that keeps on bugging my head all the time like most other games.

The Negatives :

girls that are in the game just for show & they are unfuckable , like :
( Alessa - Priscilla - Arcadia - patty - the girl predicting the future )
this is one of the major problems i face with games sometimes even the good ones .. some players might like those characters , you never know .. maybe they are not that important characters to the DEV or the story just because they were irrelevant side characters , but some of them are actually my favorite even more than the main girls , when the game ends without having at least 1 sex scene with them is very disappointing , but lets wait & see what the Dev will do with them in the future updates , who knows .. after all , the game is not completed yet its still in progress

i also have issues with the sex scenes , its very impressive as a mentioned before don't get me wrong , but it takes to long to get to a single sex scene ,, and the scene is very very short with only like 1 pose or something & you may not even reach them if you missed up the choices .. although the sex scenes themselves are great & well made , yet the amount of the sex content are very little in this game , and that's because the game is not realty rich with side characters unfortunately , it only focuses on the main girls most of the time , which is a bit lazy & boring .. again , it seems to me that the Dev is really underestimating the side characters , which he shouldn't , because it can be a huge flow in any good game , the side girls like ( Ahara , Val , Tira ) they are the invisible soldiers who adds rich sex content in any game & keeps the player entertained until he gets the main girls at the end of the VN .. less side characters leads to more blue-ball in game .

the story problem : the MC talks to much when it comes to irrelevant details ,, like , he spend more than 5 - 10 minutes listening or talking about " the history of this building - the past life of the king - the details of this war & that war - the explanation of this magic & that magic " i don't care about those deep details , its not gonna effect the story or the game , and if you want to talk about these topics at least make it short , or else it will just slow things down and drain your eyes energy , which made me end up skipping them latter on any way , i only read their conversations with their daily life situations , that was more entertaining than " the history of this & the dark past of that "

the choices : i appreciate the hard work , but im not a big fan of sacrificing some of the girls with every single choice i make ,, like for example , if you choose left , you will fuck ( A , B & C ) Only .. however if you go right , you gonna fuck ( E , F & G ) instead , why not make it 1 path with all the girls , yet The success depends on your choices ? that would be easier than this Chaos , that kind of tree branches stories with different roads & every road has another plot & different characters is just confusing & makes it hard to understand the main story-line , besides missing a huge amount of content

any way , its still a good game & deserve 4 stars .. but here is the short cut Conclusion :

---------------- BAD ------------ OK ------------ GOOD ------------ EXCELLENT
STORY :

SEXY GIRLS :

SIDE CHARACTERS :

SEX CONTENT :

SEX SCENES :

HUMOR :

CONVRSATIONS :

CHOICES :

DIFFICULTY :

TYPOS :

GLITCHES :

GRAPHECS :